Bach's Bungalow

Started by aquablob, April 06, 2007, 02:42:33 PM

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jlaurson

Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on May 19, 2015, 05:07:21 PM
Makes for interesting reading, some recommendations are totally laughable (Abbado and Rattle in the 3rd symphony???). The guy never heard a Horenstein or Barbirollin recording he didn't love. You really have to take whatever he says with a grain of salt. I think he throws in a couple of good mainstream recommendations in there so that he be taken seriously for the various ridiculous Horenstein, Barbirolli, or British-biased picks that he makes.

British-bias is an almost amusing thing among the Brits. Mind you, it's better to be biased FOR your own than AGAINST those who are not (as in German or French bias, if I may grossly simplify), but still.
The 10 Best Bach recordings on Gramophone's site are ALL by British artists. Very droll. Will publish an alternative on Forbes... have a few ideas (including several English artists, who are often magnificent) but would like to hear others', too. If you have suggestions, perhaps you could post them in a relevant Bach-thread? Much appreciated.

Jaakko Keskinen

Hmm. Interesting. I only now discovered that tune of the quodlibet from the variation 30 of Goldberg variations also appears in BWV212. Which composition came first?
"Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him. Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand."

- Victor Hugo

jlaurson

Quote from: Alberich on November 04, 2015, 06:47:42 AM
Hmm. Interesting. I only now discovered that tune of the quodlibet from the variation 30 of Goldberg variations also appears in BWV212. Which composition came first?

The tunes from that are MUCH older. You are referring to the Bergamasca, which Frescobaldi uses as the "Bergamasca melody" that is at the base of Bach's quodlibet of "Kraut und Rüben / haben mich vertrieben" and "Ich bin so lang nicht bey dir g'west". I'm not certain that the popular medieval songs are still older than the Bergamasca, but both are older than Bach.

Jo498

The Bergamasca is close to "Kraut und Rüben". I think the other song is the one used in the Peasant Cantata as well, but I am sure that this one is also older and was not invented by Bach. Only a few weeks ago I encountered for the first time the Buxtehude variations on the Bergamasca which very probably was a model for the Goldbergs and the quodlibet may have that melody to make the allusion explicit.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

jlaurson

Fresh from Forbes:



NOV 25, 2015
The Real Top 10 Bach Recordings

Bach, the Grand Master

There is something about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach that puts it in a category of its own.
Bach is the P.G. Wodehouse and the Shakespeare of the musical score rolled into one. He is the
only composer on whom I cannot overdose, and while his music seemed dated to his own, slightly
embarrassed sons, it strikes us as perfectly timeless now. His works pillars of mankind's culture,
and his music constitute the first tracks etched onto the golden record Voyager record that sails
toward hypothetical distant galactic civilizations. I should think that potential aliens might rather
get too sanguine an impression of us* ... but there we go: Bach is the bee's knees, and anyone
who knows Bach but doesn't love his music is going to be suspect to me, lest I learn a exculpatory
reason for their lamentable deficiency.

The Gramophone Bias

Gramophone Magazine is the only English language magazine that combines serious CD-reviewing
with the glossy, popular magazine approach. I used to read it religiously and got many of my first
hints, tastes, and opinions from its pages. BBC Music Magazine gets close; Classic FM Magazine
lasted nearly twenty years but wasn't taken seriously by the cogniscenti. No-nonsense, no-picture
publications like the American Record Guide or Fanfare Magazine (both American), which exude the
charm of telephone books, are total geek literature, arcane, loved by the few dedicated readers, and
more or less published out of the basements of their respective, dedicated publishers... private
ventures and labors of love that, like the lamented International Record Review, won't likely survive
their founders.

In my time as a clerk at Tower Records, we would sometimes make fun of Gramophone Magazine's
rather obvious pro-English biases. "Proximity bias" or "mere exposure effect" might be the appropriate
euphemism for them being unabashed homers. And indeed, when they published a "10 Best Bach
Recordings" list published early last year, they topped it in such a ridiculous way that it needed soft
rebutting which I hope to provide hereby...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/11/25/the-real-top-10-bach-recordings/


Karl Henning

Quote from: jlaurson on November 26, 2015, 01:15:24 AM
Fresh from Forbes:



NOV 25, 2015
The Real Top 10 Bach Recordings

Bach, the Grand Master

There is something about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach that puts it in a category of its own.
Bach is the P.G. Wodehouse and the Shakespeare of the musical score rolled into one. He is the
only composer on whom I cannot overdose, and while his music seemed dated to his own, slightly
embarrassed sons, it strikes us as perfectly timeless now. His works pillars of mankind's culture,
and his music constitute the first tracks etched onto the golden record Voyager record that sails
toward hypothetical distant galactic civilizations. I should think that potential aliens might rather
get too sanguine an impression of us* ... but there we go: Bach is the bee's knees, and anyone
who knows Bach but doesn't love his music is going to be suspect to me, lest I learn a exculpatory
reason for their lamentable deficiency.

The Gramophone Bias

Gramophone Magazine is the only English language magazine that combines serious CD-reviewing
with the glossy, popular magazine approach. I used to read it religiously and got many of my first
hints, tastes, and opinions from its pages. BBC Music Magazine gets close; Classic FM Magazine
lasted nearly twenty years but wasn't taken seriously by the cogniscenti. No-nonsense, no-picture
publications like the American Record Guide or Fanfare Magazine (both American), which exude the
charm of telephone books, are total geek literature, arcane, loved by the few dedicated readers, and
more or less published out of the basements of their respective, dedicated publishers... private
ventures and labors of love that, like the lamented International Record Review, won't likely survive
their founders.

In my time as a clerk at Tower Records, we would sometimes make fun of Gramophone Magazine's
rather obvious pro-English biases. "Proximity bias" or "mere exposure effect" might be the appropriate
euphemism for them being unabashed homers. And indeed, when they published a "10 Best Bach
Recordings" list published early last year, they topped it in such a ridiculous way that it needed soft
rebutting which I hope to provide hereby...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/11/25/the-real-top-10-bach-recordings/



Very much enjoyed this one, Jens.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

jlaurson

Quote from: karlhenning on November 30, 2015, 09:41:47 AM
Very much enjoyed this one, Jens.

thank you kindly! i aim to be readable and on occasion even worth reading.  :)

milk

Quote from: jlaurson on December 01, 2015, 03:59:20 AM
thank you kindly! i aim to be readable and on occasion even worth reading.  :)
You scored on both accounts. I'll have to check out Schiff. I always had the prejudice that the partitas just don't work on piano. I also had the prejudice that the Orchestral Suits don't rate as highly as, say, the French suites or the sonatas for violin and keyboard, or some of the cantatas. But that's a matter of taste I guess.   

milk

Hmm...do we have a thread for Bach's ten best works? But I guess it's complicated. Some of his best work may not be part of a cycle or group of works? But I would put some of the organ cycles ahead of orchestral suites as well. 

Jo498

#469
Does anyone have spreadsheets for the cantatas and organ pieces?

http://bach-cantatas.com/IndexBWV.htm

has pdf-lists and a spreadsheet for the cantatas but with *each movement* of a cantata listed which is too much.

I want them to get an overview with my incomplete hodge-podge collection of these parts of the Bach corpus to make sure I eventually have all the important pieces but without excessive doubling and quadrupling and I am of course too lazy to type/format it all myself.

EDIT: I found a word file where I had put all the cantatas in a table and already entered some of my recordings!
I still would appreciate if someone had a similar table for the organ works

Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

ritter

Quote from: karlhenning on November 30, 2015, 09:41:47 AM
Very much enjoyed this one, Jens.
+1 ... very interesting article, Jens!

Cross-posted from the "Putchases Today" thread:

Quote from: ritter on December 19, 2015, 04:45:05 AM
...

I very much enjoyed Zhu Xiao-Mei playing the Goldberg variations at the Thomsakirche in Leipzig (recenly aired by the CLASSICA channel), and some days later our friend Jens included her rendition of the WTC in his very interesting article about "The Real Top Bach Recordings" (here), so this was an easy trigger to pull (at 19 € from AmSp):

[asin]B00DY72GC6[/asin]

jlaurson


Mandryka

#472
In Peter Wispelwey's third recording of Bach's suites there's a documentary featuring Wispelwey (W), Laurence Dreyfus (D), John Butt (B) and Kees Boeke (K). A large part of it looks at issues to do with instruments, technique and dance. But some of it is about what Bach was trying to achieve with his music. Here are my notes.

Bach and his music

Bach was unconventional and eccentric . . . who didn't care about whether he was breaking rules. (W)

Contemporaries described his music as unnatural, even in writing.  This was a very strong term, used of pederasts.  He is deliberately working against all the compositional categories of good taste (which were codified in Germany.) (D)

The cello suites

I bet he wrote the first three cello suites in one go, and then he worried about the order of the last three a lot. It's typical of Bach's sets of six that the first three should be conventional and the last three less so. (B)

Bach starts off normal – 1,2 3 are understandable cello music; then 4 in an awkward key; 5 is seriously dark, the sarabande's a graveyard; in 6 everything starts to jubilate (W) 

They are written for three different instruments, the 5th with a top g scordatura and the 6th for a 5 string cello. (D)

Some of what Butt says I really don't understand, about the incompleteness of the dances in Bach's suites.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

North Star

"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." - Confucius

My photographs on Flickr

Mandryka



Does anyone know if this contains translations in English of Bach's marginalia? It appears to be still in print here

http://www.cph.org/p-6234-j-s-bach-and-scripture-glosses-from-the-calov-bible-commentary.aspx
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Quote from: Mandryka on February 07, 2016, 03:50:53 AM


Does anyone know if this contains translations in English of Bach's marginalia? It appears to be still in print here

http://www.cph.org/p-6234-j-s-bach-and-scripture-glosses-from-the-calov-bible-commentary.aspx

It does, but their cost of shipping is too steep for me.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

jlaurson


Latest on Forbes.com:
Classical CD Of The Week: Bach for Solo Soprano

Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantatas for Solo-Soprano, Dorothee Mields / L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra / Michi Gaigg, Carus

...This is arguably the weaker part of the recording at hand (Suzuki presents all 12 strophes, which even Carolyn Sampson, a rare singer I cherish just as much as Mields, can only just about make bearable), but in a way that speaks to the disc's strength rather than any weakness...


http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2016/03/23/classical-cd-of-the-week-bach-for-solo-soprano/#120b34ce6c50

jlaurson


Latest on Forbes.com:
Bach At Home In Japan

Where resides the best Bach Orchestra and Chorus in the world? Leipzig? Berlin?
Germany at least? Amsterdam – where the great Bach tradition still lives on vibrantly?
London, where the early music movement attained its first heights? Maybe, but for
my money try Kobe, Japan[1]. Forgive for a second the hyperbole of "best": there
are other really, really fine ensembles that do Bach extremely proud. But the Bach
Collegium Japan (BCJ) and its founding director Masaaki Suzuki are are part of the
exclusive high-end of interpreters of the Leipzig's Master and need yield to no one in
the quality of their Bach performances....


http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2016/04/17/bach-at-home-in-japan

jlaurson

#478
Latest on ionarts:
Ionarts-at-Large: The Vienna Symphony's B Minor Mass: Bach to Snooze To

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Philippe Jordan has taken on the sensible, laudable,
wonderful mission of adding Bach to its regularish fare. Last year they performed the St.
Matthew Passion.[1] Next season it will be the St. John Passion. And on March 19th, it was
the Mass in B minor at the Vienna Konzerthaus – part of the now defunct "Osterklang"
Festival of secular music associated with the Theater an der Wien (or rather: its Intendant,
Roland Geyer).

In short, this Karl Richter memorial performance was [a snoozer].


http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2016/04/ionarts-at-large-vienna-symphonys-b.html


Update on ionarts:

A Survey of Bach Organ Cycles


Updated: 04/24/2016: André Isoir and and the Hänssler cycle have been put into chronological
order. The details of the organs used (on mouse-over, depending on your browser) are now included for
Koopman, Alain III, Weinberger, Foccroulle and (partly) Phillips....


http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-survey-of-bach-organ-cycles.html

Cato

From the topic: Which Composer Would You Eliminate From History?

By chance I came across this comment today in Louis Vierne's autobiography: note the date! (My emphasis)

Quote"An event of considerable importance in our artistic development occurred at the beginning of October 1892... This was the discovery of Bach's chorale preludes.  When I say 'discovery' the word is not an exaggeration...  Widor was astonished that since his arrival at the Conservatoire no one had brought in one of the celebrated chorale preludes... I was acquainted with three of them, published in Braille...  My classmates did not even know the names of the pieces...  (Widor) spent the entire class time playing these pieces for us, and we were bowled over.  The most overwhelming part of the giant's organ works was suddenly revealed to us.  All of us played some chorale preludes...for the trimester examination, and the surprise of the jury* was no less than ours had been....  Ambroise Thomas (said) to Widor: 'What music!  Why didn't I know that forty years ago?  It ought to be the Gospel for all musicians, and organists in particular.' "

* Among the jurors one found Theodore Dubois, Gabriel Pierne', and Alexandre Guilmant.
"Meet Miss Ruth Sherwood, from Columbus, Ohio, the Middle of the Universe!"

- Brian Aherne introducing Rosalind Russell in  My Sister Eileen (1942)